


Rusalka

by itsmylifekay



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark, M/M, Paranormal, character death but not really, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 00:56:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21025118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmylifekay/pseuds/itsmylifekay
Summary: His mother warns him about monsters, about beautiful faces waiting to pull him beneath the surface of a quiet river. He never truly expects to meet one. Or to learn that the real monsters are hiding in plain view.Or, Napoleon is a river monster and some dark stuff happens but it all works out in the end.





	Rusalka

It’s spring when Illya first sees him. The grass is green and soft beneath his feet and flowers are bright spots on the riverbank. The sun is just dipping over the horizon and glittering off the water, glare strong enough that Illya can’t see beneath the surface as he dips his toes in then walks out to his calves. It’s freezing, of course it is, snow and ice melt not yet warmed by the summer months, and it sends a shiver racing up his spine. His eyes open wide and he feels _alive. _He fills his lungs with the cooling air and about chokes when he hears a soft chuckle across the river.

A man stares back at him, mouth tilted in the smallest of smiles, like he hadn’t meant to and certainly hadn’t meant to show it. One dark eyebrow lifts.

“You can see me?”

Illya blinks. “Of course.” He thinks back to the people he’s seen on the streets, glassy-eyed and mumbling. People his parents tell him to stay away from. “Are you sick?”

The man looks at him thoughtfully, still with that strange half-smile on his face. “No, no I’m not.” The sun sinks and shadows creep across the water. The man stares at them, then looks back up at Illya, blue eyes suddenly piercing despite the distance and growing darkness. “And you aren’t either, remember that.”

Illya wants to ask him what he means, but something brushes against his ankle and he glances down, jumping back out of the water in surprise. He squints down to try and make out what it was, figures it was a fish, but sees nothing but the flow of the river, the shimmering of the sun, and the pebbled bottom.

When he looks back up, the man is gone.

\---

As Illya grows, he goes to the river quite often, sometimes with other children and sometimes alone. He never sees the man again and after a few years he begins to wonder if it was all a dream. He hears stories of spirits, monsters, things his mother whispers to him before bed, tucks him in with a kiss and a warning not to stray too far from home, that fate has a way of taking punishment into her own hands.

He learns that fate is cruel when he’s fourteen and police storm their home, drag his father away while his mother screams. They all know how this ends. For his father, hard labor and a harder death, bodies swallowed up in the cold earth with no reminder they’d ever been there at all.

For him and his mother, shame. Shame and the loss of every comfort they once knew.

Their new apartment is small and drafty, covered in dirt and grime and god knows what else. The river is further away now, but Illya goes. His feet move as if on their own, boots crunching over leaves and cool air nipping at his chin, his neck, the tips of his fingers. He walks right up to the riverbank and bites back a scream.

His hands shake with the rage pressing at his throat. The hatred pushing at the back of his teeth.

There’s a small splash across the river and Illya looks up into blue eyes and a half-smile. Dark black hair and a beautiful face.

Something rotten curls in his stomach.

The man’s smile gets brighter, perfect white teeth and an easy tilt to his head. “Well, seems like someone’s having a bad day.”

Illya glares, nails digging into his palm as he struggles to push down the bile in his throat. His fingers twitch.

“Anything I can do to help?” The man leans forward the slightest bit and Illya takes a resolute step back.

“Rusalka.”

He hisses it like a dirty word. Feels it like poison between his teeth. Because it’s as much of a death sentence for him as the police were for his father. Even if it doesn’t kill him now, it’ll only be a matter of time before someone else does the job.

Rusalki are supposed to be women. The only reason one would appear to Illya as a male is if—

His eyes dart up and down the river, hands tapping at his sides, skin crawling with the need to _act. _

The man has leant back against the opposite bank, watching Illya with knowing eyes as he says, “There’s no one else here, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to see me. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Illya hates how easily he’s been read.

“You plan to kill me, then? With no one watching?”

The man laughs, but it’s hollow, melts into the rustling of the wind through the trees. “If I planned to kill you, you would have been dead the moment your foot touched the bank.” His head tilts, eyes looking Illya over like he’s a particularly difficult puzzle he’d like to solve. “Do you greet everyone by calling them a monster and accusing them of planning your murder?”

Illya’s jaw clenches so hard his teeth creak. He looks over his shoulder to ensure they’re still alone. “You_are _a monster and you should stay away from me. I’m not—I’m not sick. Your spells won’t work on me.”

He can tell from the way the man’s lips twitch that he doesn’t believe him. Is secretly relieved that he doesn’t try to prove the point. The man dips one leg in the river, fabric darkening where it means water.

His words come to Illya like a whisper on the current. “I told you before, you’re not sick.”

Before Illya can blink, the man is gone. The trees move in the wind. The sun beats down on the water.

Illya walks home and tries to ignore the cool tingling in his fingertips and the way his hands are still shaking.

\---

As small and inhospitable as their apartment is, it still requires rent. Their stomachs demand food. Their bodies demand heat in the winter.

With his father gone, there’s no money and no one who wants to hire the last remnants of a disgraced family.

His mother’s bedroom door gets a lock and Illya watches as countless men come in and out her door. He watches as people whisper when they walk down the street. He watches as his mother looks at the ground, no longer lifts her head to smile at friends, no longer talks to the grocer.

His hands shake and his skin prickles and the first time another boy calls his mother a whore on the school ground, the world goes dark. He comes back to himself with blood on his knuckles and four boys crying at his feet. A cold thrill goes up his spine, doesn’t dissipate even as he sits in the schoolmaster’s office. Even as his mother is called to take him home.

She cries and tells him it’s good to be strong.

She warns him of monsters that look like men. That will fear his strength, will want to control it.

Illya goes back to the river, he takes off his shoes and rolls up his pants and ignores the biting cold of late fall that sears his skin as he plunges both feet into the water. He dares a monster to try and take him now. He dares fate to see just what he thinks of her sense of justice.

\---

It becomes a pattern. Illya will come to the river with blood on his knuckles and a thrill racing down his spine, hands still trembling slightly and entire body singing for _more. _He comes as fall darkens into winter, sits in the snow and stares out over the frozen ice.

It takes a couple months, but eventually the man returns, sitting in the middle of the ice and staring at the bloodied snow melting between Illya’s fingers.

“You know,” he says, making Illya’s eyes snap up and widen. “Most people would probably think it unwise to come here bleeding. Or have you forgotten what I am?”

His eyes flash the cold, frozen blue of winter and his teeth glint as rows of sharp points in his mouth. His pristine suit flickers to something tattered, his entire body seeming to fade into the surrounding snow. All encompassing. Inescapable. The moment is gone in an instant and then it’s just the man with his half-smile, looking like he’s waiting for Illya to run.

“Like you said, if you wanted me dead, I would be. A little blood won’t change that.” He wipes more into the snow beside him, needs to have clean hands before he goes home to his mother. His fingers are still shaking. “What does it feel like?”

The man cocks his head, curious and inviting.

Illya stares into frozen blue eyes. He doesn’t feel afraid.

“To kill someone. What does it feel like?”

The man vanishes without giving him an answer. Illya’s hands clench into fists, gather up bloody snow and throw it out into the middle of the frozen river.

\---

As Illya grows, he quickly surpasses his peers, bigger and taller and stronger than any of the other boys in his school, even the upperclassmen. Most of them have learned to keep their comments to themselves, but occasionally one will slip.

Illya feels the anger wash over him like a wave, crash over him and pull him under and when he comes up gasping for air there’s always bodies on the ground at his feet. He’s never killed anyone, but he wonders if one day he will.

His teachers try to punish him, but no amount of extra work or hours locked in the library after school can keep the rage from coming. He tries to hold it back, sometimes, lets his hands twitch and his jaw clench until he can make it out to the river where he can finally let the anger course through his veins, punch trees until his knuckles are bare and bite down on his arm to muffle his own screams.

The man watches him, most times. Illya can feel him like a presence just over his shoulder. He sits on the frozen river all winter, moving steadily closer each time Illya comes, half-smile always lingering in Illya’s memory as he trudges back home.

One day, Illya sits down at the bank and stares down at the melting ice. There’s no blood on his knuckles, just scabs and scars that will never go away.

“My name is Illya.”

Water gurgles beneath the surface of the frozen river, ice creaking as it shifts in giant plates with the current. He dips his fingers into the edge where the thaw is letting through trickles of clear, freezing water.

“You asked me once how I greet people. I’d like to try again.”

His fingers prickle with the cold and he forces himself not to flinch when something brushes against them, the barest shadow of a hand visible beneath the surface. Moments later, the man is standing just a few feet away, hands in his pockets and staring down at Illya with one eyebrow raised.

Illya gets to his feet, closes the distance between them.

“I’m Illya.”

He holds out his hand.

The man takes it. His skin is cool and damp, but his smile is warm, pushing crinkles beside his eyes.

“You can call me Napoleon.”

Illya glowers. “That cannot be your real name.”

The man, _Napoleon, _smiles wider. “Now Illya, don’t be rude. We’ve just met.”

“And you’re already insufferable.”

That’s the first time Illya hears Napoleon’s laugh, and it rings over the river like music, like every spring flood and summer rain, like the quiet of snowfall and the damp comfort of fallen leaves.

He makes it a goal to hear it every time they’re together, even if it means staying until his blood dries and the sky goes dark. He learns to push the rage down, until it scratches at his skin and aches to be free, bleeds out into the water as he sits with Napoleon on the bank.

Months later, Napoleon tells him murder is never satisfying unless it’s properly directed. But when it is… well, if the look on his face is anything to go by, the flicker of sharp teeth and the tug of the current at his ankles, it must be a certain kind of ecstasy.

Illya begins to imagine what it would feel like.

He realizes no number of boys he beats in the schoolyard will replace the men who took his father. He gets into fewer fights at school and his mother kisses his forehead each night before disappearing into her room and locking the door.

\---

When he’s nearly eighteen, his mother’s reputation has spread throughout their city. Men, officials and officers and past friends of his fathers, all come through their door. It’s no secret, and certainly no one bothers denying it anymore.

His mother still walks with her head down, but there are less whispers, less dirty words spit in the streets.

Because Illya has earned a reputation, too. No matter how he’s calmed over the past year, he’s still violent, volatile, and people whisper about seeing him at the river, talking to himself and laughing. They say he’s crazy. They say that one wrong word and he’ll beat you bloody. They fear him more than they scorn his mother.

It keeps them safe. For a while.

\---

When he’s just past eighteen and graduation looms on the horizon, Illya walks down to the river and throws a stone into the water, watches the ripples spread and get swallowed by the current. He no longer startles when Napoleon suddenly appears beside him.

Illya’s a whole head taller than him now and broader, too. He brings a chessboard down to the river most days, convinces Napoleon to play a few games before the other man inevitably gives up and accuses him of cheating.

Today is no different, and before long Napoleon is sprawled dramatically across the bank and flicking water in Illya’s direction.

“I thought I was supposed to be the supernatural entity, Illya. Does your mother know about your unnatural gifts? Have you warned her that you’ve made a deal with some devil?”

Illya rolls his eyes, puts the chess set away before Napoleon can get it any more wet.

“I’m not that good, you’re just very bad. That is the true mystery— how you can fail so horribly every time.”

Napoleon gasps and is gone in an instant, only to reappear behind Illya a moment later, stealing his chess set and vanishing once again.

“You ruin that and I will recite strategies until I’ve saved up to buy a new one.”

Napoleon appears beside him again, lets out a huff and tells him he’s no fun.

“One could say I’ve endured years of torture, but that would be entirely too much. You’re an animal.”

Illya takes back his chess set, ignores the slight thrill as their hands brush.

As he’s gotten older, he’s also realized that Napoleon is…not. He’s stayed the same since the day Illya first met him so many years ago. He’s still just as handsome, has the same dark hair and pristine suit. Still looks at Illya with a careful half-smile until Illya manages to pull a real one from the depths.

One thing that’s changed is that Illya now allows himself to look. His mother is a prostitute for politicians, he’s a madman, and his father is long gone to the gulag. If looking at a man is what sends fate thundering down to drag him under, then at least Illya has someone as beautiful, as wonderful, as Napoleon to make it worthwhile. (Not that Illya would ever admit that out loud, Napoleon is already far too full of himself for that kind of honesty.)

They sit and talk once chess is over. They wonder what Illya will do after finishing school. Most likely some kind of manual labor, somewhere they won’t mind his reputation. Occasionally, Napoleon will tell Illya a story, some fantastic tale of medieval battles or clandestine romance.

Sometimes, they will just sit in silence, looking out over the river.

\---

The moon is a partial orb in the sky, a week out from it’s fullest point. It’s fall again and Illya is tired from a day doing odd jobs around the city. He’s still looking for a proper job, just a couple months after graduation and eager to help his mother make ends meet. The streets are dark and quiet, eerily so as he approaches the building where he and his mother live. There’s a flash of a curtain drawn closed as he walks by.

His hands are already prickling as he walks up the stairs, something cold settling into his chest as he sees the door to their apartment standing ajar. Something tells him to run, a whisper at the back of his neck that calls him to the river. He hurries back down the stairs, runs as soon as he hits the street.

The river is dark and silent when he gets there, only the low drone of the current to fill the air. Then a small splash, and Napoleon’s head appears above the water. His hair is slicked back, droplets running down his face. There’s something in his eyes that makes Illya’s blood run cold.

“I’m sorry,” Napoleon says. He takes a step and his shoulders appear, suit clinging to him, dripping water, eerily silent as he moves. “By the time I noticed what was happening, it was too late.”

Illya feels his fingers twitch. He wants to scream. Instead, he walks closer to the water, takes off his socks and shoes and rolls up his pants, as if in a trance.

“Where is she?”

Napoleon looks at him, then down into the water. “I assumed you would rather not see. But I can—”

“No,” Illya sits down heavily on the bank. “Just tell me who.”

He looks downstream, sees a bit of mud and rock that’s been torn up, like there was some kind of struggle. He forces himself to breathe.

“They looked like they took joy in what they were doing,” Napoleon says. “They accused her of selling state secrets.”

Illya shakes. Feels rage boiling beneath his skin.

He looks again to where mud and rock have been stirred up on the bank. Imagines he can hear her screams. Hear splashes in the water.

Illya turns to look at Napoleon, still halfway in the water with water dripping down his face, skin a little too pale to be natural. He sucks in a breath.

“Illya,” Napoleon says softly, as if he can see the thoughts running through Illya’s head, the sudden rush of _what if_.

He’s not sure how he feels about it, the want to see his mother again and the horror at her being stuck on earth, twisted into something she would never want to be.

“Is she—” He starts, can’t force himself to say it. “Could she…?”

“Become like me?” Napoleon shakes his head, whispers a quiet “_No”._Napoleon looks down and for the first time Illya sees Napoleon look small, unsure. “I got to her just afterwards. I knew, with all that you both had been through, that the possibility of her changing was high.” He looks up and meets Illya’s eyes, the pain in his face taking Illya’s breath away. “It’s a terrible life, Illya. A lonely life. And unless she killed the men who did this to her, she would never be free.”

Illya stares down into the dark water, to Napoleon’s hands just beneath the surface.

“What did you do?”

“Illya.”

Illya shakes his head, feels the tension in his hands drain away. “Tell me.”

“I had to take her heart.”

Illya squeezes his eyes shut, overcome with the visceral pain of the image, the thought of Napoleon’s hands covered with his mother’s blood. But she was already dead. Ready to move on from the world that Napoleon helped free her from.

When he opens his eyes again, Napoleon has taken a couple steps back into the water, sunk up past his chin, staring down into the water.

“Come here.”

Napoleon’s head jerks up and Illya holds out his hand.

“Come here,” he says again.

He watches as Napoleon comes closer, lets out a sigh of relief when cool, damp skin presses against his palm. He tugs Napoleon to sit down beside him.

They stare out across the water. The current brushes past Illya’s calves, tugs where his pant legs have gone beneath the surface.

“They will come for me next.”

Napoleon’s hand tightens around his.

“I am a liability. It is only a matter of time.”

“But you won’t go back to your apartment, will you? You could run.”

Illya shakes his head. “Someone will have seen me come to the river. They will follow. There are eyes everywhere. Nowhere to run.”

Napoleon tires to pull his hand away, but Illya holds it tight.

“I do not _want _to run,” he says. He turns to Napoleon, offers him a small, tired smile. “Fate has taken everything from me in this life. But she has given me you.” He watches Napoleon’s eyes flicker, rubs his thumb over the back of his hand. “If it is my time to die, then I want it to be here.”

Napoleon stares down into the water, holds tighter to Illya’s hand.

It doesn’t take long before they hear footsteps approach, surrounding them, long, dark shadows that stretch out over the water. A gun cocks.

Illya stares out over the river, face blank, feet cool in the flowing water. His eyes take in everything and nothing all at once.

Then, there is truly nothing. Bright, blinding pain and a flash of darkness. The shock of cool water against his face.

The sound of screams.

He can feel the water churning around him, can feel a strong downward pull and the occasional brush of something solid against his hand, his ankle, the small of his back.

He hears a familiar whisper in his ear.

_These are the men who killed your mother._

His fingers twitch, his skin prickles. He hears his mother’s screams. He hears laughter. He hears the constant scrape of the lock on her door and the whispers on the streets.

He hears nothing.

There is only rage, perfectly directed.

The water is suddenly warm around him, the current pushing him forward, the taste of salt and copper on his tongue. The screams die down to silence. Something sings in his veins.

_Ecstasy_.

The world goes dark.

-

_“Illya.”_

His ears pick up only muffled silence.

There is no heartbeat. No fear.

Feeling comes back to him slowly; spreads out like a warm ripple from the hand that wraps around his own, fingers pushing between his knuckles.

_“Illya, open your eyes.”_

The faintest of light filters through the water, the moon a distorted, rippling shape up above. His back is on the riverbed and above him he can see bodies floating like clouds against the night sky. Dark blood smeared across the milkyway.

He feels a hand press against his chest, sharp nails just barely pricking the skin.

He forces himself to focus, eyes tracking to where Napoleon is floating just above him. It’s his hand on his chest, above his heart.

Napoleon’s eyes are dark, haunted, the frozen depths that never see the light. There’s an ancient sadness in the thin line of his mouth.

Illya’s hand wraps around Napoleon’s wrist like a vice, blood smearing against pale skin. Marking him even as Illya shoves his arm away.

He gasps in a breath and cold water fills his lungs, his veins.

He is _alive._

The moon ripples through the water above them. Dark shadows dance across the riverbed, shaped by the bodies floating up towards the surface.

Illya presses his mouth to the soft shell of Napoleon’s ear, whispers into the current so that his words can be taken to the furthest ends of the earth, to wherever fate herself is lurking.

_We will never be alone._

This time, when he meets Napoleon’s eyes, they are wide, sparkling like sun on the water.

The river rushes on around them, cold—

and full of life.


End file.
